Education: A Very Short Introduction

Description

This new edition explores how and why education has evolved as it has, examining the ways in which it has responded over the centuries to influences in politics, philosophy, and the social sciences. Focussing on education today, it considers the controversies over progressive versus formal teaching, and also examines education worldwide.

• Explores how the evolution of education has been shaped by ideas in politics, philosophy, and the social sciences
• Considers controversy over progressive versus formal teaching
• Examines the work of important education theorists, including Dewey, Piaget and Vygotsky
• Reflects on the curriculum and how it can be shaped to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world
• Assesses reasons for the repeated false starts in moves to inclusivity
• Questions the oft-made claim of education to be a force for social mobility

About the Author(s)

Gary Thomas, Professor in Education, University of Birmingham

Gary Thomas is Professor in Education, University of Birmingham, having previously worked as a teacher and as an educational psychologist. His teaching and research have focused on inclusion, special education, and the methods used in social science research. He has written more than 20 books and over 100 articles on his research work in education, which has been funded by UK Research Councils, the Nuffield Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, charities and national and local government. He has been the editor of several major journals in education, including Educational Review and the British Educational Research Journal.

Table of Contents

Preface
1:Beginnings
2:Oil and water: the formal and the progressive
3:The traditions unfold: ideas into practice
4:Big ideas from the 20th century
5:Analysts and theorists: what did they ever do for us?
6:The curriculum
7:School's out!
References and further reading
Index

Reviews

"Its stimulating, readable approach...make[s] sense of the principles, themes and connections in the continuing complex story of how contested ideas around education are put into policy and realised in practice." - William Scott, Professor Emeritus, University of Bath